Translations:Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Ferns/8/en

1. A mature fern, called a sporophyte fern produces spores through a process called 'meiosis (pronounced my-OH-sis). Each spore has only half the genetic material of the parent plant, a condition called haploid.
2. The spores are dispersed
3. A spore grows by cell division into a gametophyte - still with only half the genetic material of an adult organism.
4. The gametophyte produces both sperm and eggs on the same organism using a process called mitosis (pronounced my-TOE-sis).
5. The egg remains attached to the prothallus, but the sperm leaves the prothallus and swims to an egg on another plant which it then fertilizes.
6. The fertilized egg is now has a full set of genetic material (and is called diploid) and grows into a sporophyte (the typical adult "fern" plant).